Russell takes pole in Baku as Antonelli hits the wall

George Russell took pole position for Mercedes in qualifying at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Saturday, while team-mate Kimi Antonelli crashed out and will start 16th. Russell outpaced Ferrari's Charles Leclerc by 0.837 seconds.

Russell's pole was his first since the Austrian Grand Prix at the end of June and he had looked comfortable throughout the weekend. "That's probably the biggest margin I've had in my whole career," Russell said. "The lap felt really sweet and the car has been feeling great all weekend."

Antonelli's qualifying ended early when he hit the inside wall at Turn One in the first session, broke the suspension and was knocked out. He initially tried to return to the pits but was instructed to stop: "Let me try," Antonelli pleaded, before Bonnington told him that either the track rod or upright was broken and there was no way Mercedes could fix that in the time they had to turn the car around before the next session.

Oscar Piastri qualified third for McLaren, ahead of Red Bull's Isack Hadjar and McLaren's Lando Norris in fifth. Lewis Hamilton was sixth, ahead of the Alpine of Pierre Gasly and Red Bull's Max Verstappen in eighth; with a tow or slipstream worth as much as 0.5 seconds, Verstappen had been following Norris on their final laps when the Briton went off track, which scuppered Verstappen's chances of competing closer to the front.

Charles Leclerc said the second place was as expected but the size of the gap to Mercedes was not, describing himself as somewhat taken aback by Mercedes' superiority. The session also continued a difficult weekend for Antonelli, whose running had been compromised by reliability problems that meant he missed out on half the possible running on Thursday.

There was positive news for Williams as Carlos Sainz produced the team's first top-10 qualifying performance of the year after Williams introduced a new chassis this weekend, which has brought them down to the weight limit for the first time this season, after being as much as 25kg over at the start of the year. Team-mate Alex Albon did not manage to secure a tow in the second part of qualifying and was "anyway struggling with straight-line speed all session", and was 13th, just under 0.4secs behind the Spaniard.

Saturday, 26 September at 12:00 BST Live commentary on BBC Radio 5 Live with build-up from 11:00; live text updates on BBC Sport website and app